Ringtones

A week ago, I published an article on mobile phone customization and as a continuation of it, here’s a post on ringtones or ring tones for mobile phones. Ringtones are arguably the most popular and frequently changed parts among the other components of phone customization. This is due to the fact that ringtone is the component that allows mobile phone users to express and identify themselves most effectively as the crowd will notice the user every time there is an incoming call, messages or any other alerts. The other components are more ‘hidden’ and will only be noticed when other individuals borrow the phone for calling, messaging or fiddling around. Thus, more money and time are spent on customizing the ringtones by mobile phone users in order to stand out from the crowd.

Although there are three main types of ringtones which are monophonic tones, polyphonic tones and truetones, the first two are almost obsolete at this time because they are unattractive and dull compared to truetones. Furthermore, mobile phones which can support the use of truetones have been around since at least 5 years ago. Thus, only users of older generation of mobile phones are still using them. However, they are mostly middle-aged and elderly people who do not see the needs of using the latest mobile phones with all the bells and whistles and therefore, are not into customizing their phones to the same extent as the teenagers and young adults.

Truetones, which are also known as realtones or mastertones, are popular because they offer music or sound effects at very high clarity and with the good speakers in the newer generation of phones, they are almost similar as their real-life counterparts. The popularity of truetones is evidenced by its easy availability from all mobile carriers and mobile content providers. Hence, AT&T users can pay a small fee to download the latest cool at&t ringtones or from other content providers. Most companies also have a website which offer lower-quality and shorter version of the ringtones available in their catalog for users to sample them before making a purchase.